Teachers of adolescent poor readers often find that their students are willing to do anything BUT read and write. Getting students to believe that they can make meaningful progress—when all prior experience suggests they will not—and to work at something that has never been rewarding is a major challenge. Join Dr. Louisa Moats, the lead author of LANGUAGE! Live, a blended program for adolescent students reading below grade level, as she discusses using relevance and success as strategies to motivate unengaged adolescents to seek and obtain achievement in reading.

Presenter: Dr. Louisa Moats Dr. Louisa Cook Moats, Ed.D., spent four years between 1997 and 2001 directing the NICHD Early Reading Interventions Project in Washington, DC. Her interest in spelling began while she was a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has taught teachers at the Greenwood Institute in Vermont and Simmons College in Boston. Dr. Moats has also been a teacher, school psychologist, and licensed psychologist in private practice. She worked on the California Reading Initiative from 1996-1997 as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Sacramento County Office of Education. Her research interests include the language knowledge of teachers, spelling development and instruction, and the implementation of school-wide interventions for improving literacy.

Presenter: Sheryl Ferlito Sheryl Ferlito, Ed.S. is a Special Services Learning Consultant for Chippewa Valley Schools in Clinton Township, Michigan. She taught LANGUAGE! Live for several years at Dakota High School, Michigan’s second largest comprehensive High School. In addition to teaching special education grades 1-12 for 23 years, she is a published author and contributing writer of LANGUAGE! Live. Sheryl continues is a member of International Dyslexia Association (IDA) and is published in their journal, Perspectives on Language and Literacy.